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Cad 4 PDF
Cad 4 PDF
Introduction
I have always been fascinated by old structures and machinery. Buildings such as
the Coliseum in Rome are all the more amazing when one realizes that two thousand
years ago builders had none of the construction equipment we take for granted today nor
did they have any of the tools for creating designs that we now use. It was more of an art
form than traditional engineering with the master builder directing the work of thousands.
Today, the Coliseum exhibits only part of its past glory. On the other hand, many
of the magnificent cathedrals and castles built in Europe during the Middle Ages still
stand and many have been in continuous use every since they were first constructed. 1
While we have many examples of early construction, few machines from that era still
exist. Most were war machines built to assault the enemy’s castles and were probably
destroyed in the process.
For centuries, engineering was focused on war, either building defensive
fortifications or the machines to attack these fortifications. In fact the first non-military
engineering discipline is called “civil” engineering to distinguish it from its military
counterpart. Here also, few documents exist today describing how these early military
war machines were built. Those that do exist were done on parchment or scratched into
clay tablets.
That is not to say that these early builders did not use sketches and drawings. As
an example, the Greek Parthenon could not have been constructed unless someone
carefully calculated the size and shape of each stone that went into the building. Most
likely, some method was used to document that information since many people were
involved in the work. It was only during the early part of the 15th century that the concept
of graphic projections was well understood by early Italian architects. This was about the
same time that paper began to replace parchment as a drawing medium.
Existing engineering drawings describing machines and buildings date back to the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Most of these are in bound volumes stored in European
museums and libraries, particularly in southern Europe, and viewing them is restricted
primarily to academic researchers. Today, we would describe them more as sketches than
as technical drawings. They were not to scale nor did they have dimensions. Many of
these documents contain extensive textual descriptions that help one understand the intent
of the drawings.
Early engineering drawings served two purposes. On one hand, they were a
reference experienced craftsmen used to build or construct what was portrayed. While the
drawings were more symbolic than what we are familiar with today, these craftsmen
1
Wilkinson, Philip, Amazing Buildings, Dorling Kindersley, New York, 1993
Figure 2.1
Leonardo da Vinci Machine for Cutting Files
“Both the drawing’s beauty and the ingeniousness of the mechanics make this
file cutting machine very interesting. The operation is completely automatic: the
weight falls unwinding the rope and activating both the rise and fall of the hammer
and the progress of the piece to be cut, by using gears and levers. The complete
automation not only helps Man but also gives more homogeneous results,
foreshadowing modern production processes.” 3
2
Lefèvre, Wolfgang, Picturing Machines 1400-1700, MIT Press, 2004
3
Cianchi, Marco, Leonardo’s Machines, Edizioni Becocci – Largo Liverani, Florence, Italy
4
Lefèvre, Wolfgang, Picturing Machines 1400-1700, MIT Press, 2004, pg. 176
5
Booker, Peter Jeffrey – A History of Engineering Drawing – Chatto & Windus 1963
Figure 2.2
Universal Drafting Machine
6
Burington, Richard S., Handbook of Mathematical Tables and Formulas, Handbook Publishers,
Sandusky, Ohio, 1955
What is taking place in the computer industry is that specific capabilities are
relentlessly moving down the food chain. Functions that once had to be done as part of an
application package are now done in the operating system, and functions that once were
done in the operating system are now part of the basic computer processor. Typically this
results in faster performance as these functions move closer to the core of the computer.
It also has the benefit of reducing costs.
One easy example to follow is what happened over time to floating point
processors. Thirty to 35 years ago most minicomputer systems handled floating point
operations with software routines embedded in the operating system. The need for greater
performance encouraged the computer manufacturers to fabricate hardware floating point
accelerators. These were typically the size of a small refrigerator and cost $20,000 or
more. Early engineering workstations typically came with board-size floating point
options that sold for several thousand dollars. During the mid-1980s, a number of
semiconductor manufacturers developed individual chips or a small set of chips that
performed the same floating point operations as did the add-in boards. These chips were
simply added to the computer’s motherboard. In the PC world, they were called math
coprocessors. The manufacturing cost came down dramatically, the computer systems
vendors easily incorporated these chips into their products and performance improved.
The next step involved adding floating point functions to the basic microprocessor chip.
Performance improved since data did not have to flow between multiple circuit
7
Coons, Steven, Project MAC-TR-41, MIT 1967
8
Bézier, Pierre – A View of the CAD/CAM Development Period – Annals of the History of
Computing Volume 20, Number 2, 1998
9
Risenfeld, Rich Applications of B-Spline Approximation to Geometric Problems of CAD, Ph.D. thesis,
Syracuse University, February 1973
10
Versprille, Kenneth J., Computer-Aided Design Applications of the Rational B-Spline Approximation
Form, Ph.D. thesis, Syracuse University, February 1975
A key observation needs to be made at this point. Much of the work going
on in developing better surface definition techniques was being done at academic
research centers and was typically published in widely available journals. Each
researcher was, therefore, able to build on the work of those who had tackled earlier
aspects of the problem. As seen by what occurred at Citroën, this would probably
not have occurred if the work had primarily been done by industrial companies.
In regards to this latter issue, most automotive manufacturers were also
working on internal surface geometry applications. Their major focus was in taking
11
Knapp, Lewis, A Design Scheme Using Coons Surfaces With Nonuniform Basis B-Spline Curves, Ph.D.
thesis, Syracuse University, February 1979
12
Ferguson, James C. Multi-variable curve interpolation, Journal of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1964, Pg.
221-228
13
Rogers, David F., An Introduction to NURBS, Academic Press, San Diego, 2001, Pg. 130
14
Ibid, Preface
15
Particular thanks go to Rachael Taggart for help with this section as well as input from Charles Lang.
16
CSG or Constructive Solid Geometry builds a solid model using primitive shapes such as cones and
spheres and Boolean combinations of these basic elements. Boundary Representation of B-Rep models use
surface definitions to describe the enclosed solid.
17
Quotes from Lang and Braid are based on telephone conversations and emails in mid-2004 with the
author and Rachel Taggart.
18
Voelcher, Herbert B. and Requicha, Aristides A. G., Research in Solid Modeling at the University of
Rochester: 1972-87, chapter in Fundamental Developments of Computer-Aided Geometric Modeling,
Edited by Les Piegel, Academic Press, San Diego, 1993
19
Overview of the Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Engineering Marketplace, Input, Mountain
View, California, November 1982
20
Machover, Carl, MicroCAD Trends – 1980/1990, 4th Annual International Forum on Microbased CAD,
September 23, 1987, North Carolina State University